


More than fanciful

by SrebrnaFH



Series: Monday Fix-Its [16]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BAMF John, Canon Divergence - The Abominable Bride, Developing Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Doctor John Watson, Episode: The Abominable Bride, Hurt Sherlock Holmes, M/M, Monday Fix-It, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Tags Contain Spoilers, Victorian John Watson, Victorian Sherlock Holmes, accidental injury, it was all a dream, mary is evil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-12 00:13:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18000119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SrebrnaFH/pseuds/SrebrnaFH
Summary: Sherlock wakes up, beat up and in pain, with the ugly memory of John hurting him.Monday Fix-its is a series of one-shots (or two-parters) that take a piece of cannon BBC Sherlock and fix it so that JohnLock would happen. It won't necessarily happen IN the story, but it is the aim or each of these stories. HEA for our boys is the priority.





	More than fanciful

**Author's Note:**

> So, ok. I said no Season 4 fix-its.  
> This isn't a S4 fix-it, this is... Something else.  
> This is TAB fix-it.  
> I love TAB.
> 
> A bit bigger than other Monday FixIts.

He was slow to wake and the aches of his body did nothing to encourage regaining consciousness. There was a lingering, low, pulsing pain somewhere in the general vicinity of his stomach, or, more precisely, simply everywhere in his chest and abdomen.

He moved his fingers, experimentally, and even they felt both sluggish and tense at the same time, as if undecided which malady to inflict upon him yet - but he was sure something would be happening soon - probably the moment he would lose his focus and then...

He felt for the bedding below him, but it was no thin hospital mattress that supported his prone body, it was a thick and luxurious one - one in his own bed.

His own bed? Whose bed?

Why wasn't he in a hospital? Considering the way he felt and the probable amount of plain brute force it took to put him in that condition, he must have been either in a traffic accident or in a particularly vicious fight and both of these would mean normally that he should be in a trauma unit, being attended to by nurses and doctors and...

And John.

There was something about John. Something he kept hidden from himself. He inhaled slowly and went down, into the records section of his brain. There was... There were so many objects there that were directly linked to _John_.

A pair of gloves. He picked it up, turning the disconnected metaphor for hands in his fingers, looking for the association he made with it.

John's hands, checking on his injuries with his fingertips, palpating his abdomen for internal organs, holding his face in place as he checked his eyes with his little torch.

John's hands, hitting him over and over, kicks bringing him to the ground, no, no, delete, _DELETE._

John wasn't...

John.

John nursed him back to health.

_John._

_John?_

John had beat him up.

Because of that mad woman who took him away, who offered him a blanket of normality, who lured him away with what John never really needed, never really wanted, but was _trained_ to want by the society around them.

John had beat him up.

It wasn't his fault. It was her, her arts and allurements, her promise of a white picket fence and a baby - he was pretty sure it wasn't John's baby, John was a doctor, he knew how to use contraceptives.

_John had beat me up, how did this happen, how could it have happened?_

_Mon fr_ _ère, que s'est-il passé?_

_How could it have happened?_

_What happened?_

He was in his own bed, although heavily injured and definitely in need of medical attention. If he was home, there was only one person who could be providing that attention, but he was at _his_ home, with Rosie, taking care of not-his daughter, a child of a woman who was built of lies and venom, he wasn't...

No. He was there. Right there, at Baker Street. How come? Why would they reconcile after such a terrible thing... thing that happened...

There was something slipping through his fingers, slick and quick and nimble. A thought.

It didn't make sense for him to forgive John in such a fashion. No, no, that was not the point. He would forgive John almost everything, should John ask him for it.

No, he would forgive, period. He might not say it, not until John asked about it, but he would forgive. Very well, that was done. One potential issue closed.

However the main question was, why would John do that to him? Why would John grieve Mary so much, why would...

He frowned, his head rolling loosely on his pillow.

There was a child screaming somewhere in the background - on the street? A boy... A boy, maybe ten years of age, hawking his wares - newspapers! A newspaper boy, his not yet broken voice advertising the evening paper, yes.

But. However. No.

He peeled his eyes open. Slowly.

There it was, his ceiling, just as he remembered it. Cracked and lined with black, spiderwebby faults, slightly yellowed from cigarette smoke.

No.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

His ceiling was pristine white, flat was freshly redone after Eurus' attack on their living room. Mycroft took great delight in putting the flat to rights and lorded it over the two of them a bit, until John scared him off with a bowl of cauliflower salad.

No.

He shook his head.

His ceiling was dark and well-baked in the smoke of his pipe, his cigarettes and the occasional herbal smoke he indulged in to let his brain relax.

There was someone in the room with him.

His senses must have been dulled significantly, if he managed to miss one person whose presence in his bedchamber made it even worse than waking up with an apparent case of time and space displacement.

"Brother mine," the low, somewhat barelly-sounding voice intoned. "I know that you are awake."

He managed to stop himself from throwing something blindly at his only sibling's head - wait a moment, what about Eurus? Mycroft wasn't his only whatever...

He froze, his hand halfway towards his face.

"I am," he croaked. "But I'm unsure..."

"It's 1895," Mycroft sighed, which was more akin to what a smith's bellows should have sounded like and less like a human being. "You are in your own bed. You are hurt. You wake up from time to time and you keep being scared, but each time of new things. You are not to move or try to roll or rise until doctor Watson comes back from whatever it is that he felt compelled to visit."

"You, bestirred yourself..."

"The boy that had brought me the message at the Doctor's orders told me that you were near death, according to Watson's expertise. I've been here, with you, every day since. Giving doctor Watson time to run errands and take care of himself."

"But..."

Mycroft loomed, which looked as if a little mountain was looming to have a closer look at him.

"But nothing, brother mine," he said softly. "Rest and wait."

_Mycroft in the Diogenes Club, devouring a pudding._

_Mycroft in a dapper three-piece suit, leaning on his umbrella._

_Mycroft talking about his liver failing._

_Mycroft manipulating the modern world by the means of electronic surveillance._

Was it fair to desire things that would never happen together?

He wanted his brother healthy, mobile, up to a challenge of the world around him. Alive.

He wanted John Watson who had never laid a finger on him in anger.

Each of them belonged to a different reality.

"I seem to have had some quite interesting dreams, brother," he started casually. "I distinctly remember you being there - dressed in a modern cut of a morning suit, an impressive umbrella in your hand... It's possible there was a pistol in it. Or a rapier."

"Sounds very... vigorous," Mycroft's words dripped with sarcasm and disgust. "And you dreamt of me as this kind of sportish fellow, did you? What else?"

"Lestrade... without his side whiskers. And with properly hair. John..."

"You mean doctor Watson."

He blinked.

"Yes, of course. Doctor Watson with no moustache - just like he used to run around at the time of our first meeting. He had..." he shook his head uncertainly, the strong visions he had just after waking now swiftly escaping his grasp. "He had a wife. A woman. He married a woman. Did Watson marry a woman?" he asked, gasping as he tried to sit up. "She is dangerous. She killed..."

"That is the natural way of things, brother. A man meets a woman, finds her tempting, she finds him less than disgusting, they marry and then they procreate. This is what everyone does."

"John... Watson is not _everyone_ , brother," he growled and allowed the pull of gravity to put him back onto the pillow.

"But neither is he you... or me," Mycroft made a small sound.

"Thank God for that."

"Well, I would not invoke His name in this case, brother. Anyway, yes, doctor Watson is - well - is married."

"Was."

John.

John's voice.

John's steady and worried eyes.

John's dependable strength.

"Now, how is the patient doing today?"

John's hands, reaching for him.

He flinched.

John flinched, taking a step away.

"Holmes, are you fully awake? Do you know where you are? Do you recognise me?"

"Ah," Mycroft cleared his throat. "I believe my brother brought something more than before from his drug-induced dreams. He thinks your wife had murdered someone."

"Well, by now she probably did," John - Watson - mumbled. "Knowing her, she knifed the first person who annoyed her, just for practice."

"Well, she was trained..."

"No, she just is that spiteful," John's voice sounded rough. "Back to the topic," he turned towards Sherlock and watched him for a moment from a distance. "How are you feeling, old friend?"

He managed to crack his paper-dry lips in a slight smile.

"About as well as a man who had just dreamt of being savagely beat up may - especially once he wakes up to being in fact bruised all over."

"Oh," John paused in the action of rolling up his sleeves. "Well, that is my fault, I suppose."

_Oh?_

"Why would you have... I mean, in my dreams, you..."

"Holmes?"

A frown.

"My brother is trying to imply that in his dreams it was you who had inflicted these injuries on him. And I can attest to the fact that it wasn't you - at least not in the manner I'm guessing from my brother's reaction."

"What?"

"In his dreams, you have beat him up severely. Meanwhile we were here, at his bedside, and I can be a witness to your continued good care of his person."

"Holmes," John pulled a chair up to his bed and laid his hand open, palm up, on the mattress. "Your dreams were probably rather frightening, but I need to be able to ascertain your condition. Will you be able to give me your hand, so I can check your pulse?"

Slowly, slowly. Keeping his eyes on John's. Slowly.

He unfolded one of his hands and laid it across the warm, calloused palm.

Two fingers wrapped around his wrist and John slowly pulled out his watch to measure out a half-minute.

"Steady, but not very strong," he finally declared. "Your heart..."

John's stethoscope made an appearance and Sherlock found himself relaxing slowly. John in his 'doctor' mode was exactly what he needed. He felt safe and taken care of and - dared he say? - loved...

He felt a weak smile tugging at his lips.

"Ah, here you are," John blew on the chest piece of the stethoscope and reached up, to draw apart the strings holding together Sherlock's nightshirt. Keeping his eyes on Sherlock's face all the time, he manipulated the material, giving himself access to the sternum and solar plexus.

"Breathe normally," he suggested in an undertone. "I need to listen to your heart."

And so they sat, for minutes, John's worried face frowning from time to time as he directed his focus inside of his patient, one hand guiding the expensive new instrument - birthday gift from Sherlock - and the other holding on to Sherlock's forearm, his thumb painting calming circles on the tense muscle.

Sherlock had to make a conscious effort not to lean into that touch.

One reason was his brother's presence.

Another was, of course, John's own sensibility of what was proper.

Yet third was that he really didn't want to put any pressure on his ribs.

Ribs that throbbed in pain now that he thought about them, making him hiss in pain.

"Holmes?" John was suddenly all alert and awake, far from the remote diagnostician that had been just there. "What is wrong? Tell me, my friend, what pains you?"

He could only shake his head, trying to make his instinctive breaths as shallow as possible.

"Ah."

Yes, "Ah". All Doctor Watson needed was a few minutes with a patient and he could tell you everything about him. Well, he would never tell you what kind of shoes the patient preferred - only that whatever he wore, affected his gait - and could not identify a factory worker by his beard - but could tell who in the room is at the highest risk of dying of black lung - and would not know a cocaine user with a bad habit of escaping into his dreams by his fingernails - but he definitely knew a cocaine user by his veins, his skin and the way his heart stuttered once in a while, tired beyond all acceptable measure, worn out with long abuse and neglect.

He could also tell from a few breaths when someone was in pain, in distress and had trouble drawing enough air.

"Listen now, Holmes. I know it hurts. I had it done to myself once, too, so I can assure you, I _know_ what it feels like. You have to calm down and muddle through. The ribs are knitting slowly, because you eat next to nothing, but they are knitting. Soon you should be, if not pain free, than at least much more comfortable. I am tremendously sorry to have done this to you, but..."

"You?" he gasped in astonishment. "That's what you call 'good care', brother?!" he turned to Mycroft, feeling John moving away from him in alacrity. "How... why?"

"Holmes..." his friend stood now in the feet of the bed, his hands helplessly raised - empty, open - and his face pained. "I never wanted to cause you pain, but..."

"But you did!" he shook all over, hands tracing down the ribcage, probing at painful spots, mouth twisted in an uncontrollable grimace of pain. "What did you do to me!?"

"He saved your life, brother mine."

He clutched the duvet with both hands, pushing it off himself, trying to reach further.

"What?"

"He saved your life, Sherlock. Or rather, brought you back to the land of the living."

He raised his eyes at the lined, tired visage of his best - only - friend. John shrugged, turning aside.

"But... why...?"

"Chest compressions," Mycroft provided, when John seemed to be struck mute. "Your heart stopped, little brother. Doctor Watson was with you when you started fading and managed to keep your blood flowing and the air in your lungs by application of the method that the Royal Humane Society makes such a fuss about in port cities. You were not a drowned fisherman, but the application and the idea was the same - to keep the blood moving and the air in your chest long enough for your body to remember what it was supposed to do on its own."

He watched.

John's left hand, shaking. Tight manacle of his right palm around the left wrist, keeping it from too visible a tremor.

John's eyes, lined in bruised purple. Too many nights sitting up and lack of sleep - prolonged lack of sleep.

John's posture, leaning to the right, where his cane used to be. Only ever happened in the times of great stress.

John's muscle tone. Much diminished, a victim of lack of sleep, lack of sustenance and lack of exercise.

"How long?" he asked finally, trying the mathematics of adding it all together and failing in a spectacular fashion.

"A month," John answered finally. "It's been a month since your first collapse. Your heart gave out, right in front of me, in our day room. I managed to massage it back to live by quick application of the method your brother alludes to. It took barely two dozen compressions to have you back with us. I moved you to the settee and revived you with sweet tea and broth, bringing your temperature back to what a living human being is supposed to present. You were in and out of consciousness - trying to convince me that it was as you had planned it to be. For some reason, you were speaking of pretending to be under the influence for the purpose of a case. We didn't have a case at the time, so I took it as a drug-induced hallucination. Then you stood up, said something about fish tanks and smiling sharks and collapsed yet again. This time..." John took a long, trembling breath. "This time it took longer."

He saw his friend pressing a fist into his mouth - a grown man never cried in front of others - and he dearly wished he could kiss that poor, abused hand.

"This time it took me minutes to bring you back," John finished in a choked voice. "You were flailing and crying this time, panicked and barely recognising me. You shouted something about a woman bleeding out and - and Mary being there. I thought you were seeing things, because I knew not where Mary was that night, but she definitely was not _here_."

John breathed spasmodically and braced himself on the footboard of the bed, legs wide, stance of a man expecting a hit all tense and stubborn, watching Sherlock's face as he explained further.

"And then there was the third time. I managed to get you to your room and you started to just... go suddenly all limp, as if someone took out all your bones - and I couldn't let you, not after the way you had just left me, twice. I started pumping, but you were not reacting, so I... I pressed deeper. Making sure I reached the heart with the pressure. The brochures describe cracked ribs as one of the possible risks of that method, but as they say - better a cracked rib than a dead friend..."

Sherlock looked upon the crown of his friend's head, as John now bowed and leaned forward, barely keeping himself upright with his elbows propped on the wooden frame of the bed.

"Judge me then," the doctor said bitterly. "Judge me for making all effort to bring you back to life. I will not apologise for it."

"John," he swallowed around the rarely-used name. "I am very sorry."

The blonde head shot up and the pair of blue eyes focused on him.

"I am..." he came to a stop and just shook his head. "I was unfair, my friend. I apologise. I am the only one in this room who should."

"No matter, Holmes," John's thin lips produced a half-smile. "It's all fine, my dear fellow. It's all fine. From my side, I have to..." he shook his head. "I have to apologise for suspecting you, myself."

He felt more than saw Mycroft moving uncomfortably.

"I had suggested at some point that you might have upped the dosage of your favourite - and I blamed that for the state of your heart."

"I've never..."

"I know."

"But how...? How can you know?"

"Because now we know who had interfered with your supply."

He frowned, looking from his friend to his brother.

"What... How? Who would do such a thing?"

John shrugged and sighed.

"I already said, didn't I?"

"John."

"Brother."

"You..." he measured John with his eyes again.

Shirt only hanged after laundering, not pressed.

Trousers carefully brushed - ex-military, John was self-sufficient in the care of his clothes.

There was something... Something that frankly screamed 'bachelor' in all this, but he couldn't put his finger on it... John looked just like he had always done, like he did all these years ago...

"You shaved."

"I did."

"Recently."

"The moustache was her idea," John shrugged. "She said it would be nice to know where I was on the Strand illustrations."

"I think I hallucinated you shaved and with a moustache, intermittently."

"You complained about it at some point," his friend mumbled.

"I did _what_?"

"Brother," Mycroft smiled in a rather oily way. "Please remember what I said about keeping air in your lungs."

He only noticed his hand coming up to touch his lips when the icy cold of his fingers brought him back to full wakefulness.

"Ah," he managed to say. "You said 'Was'. I suppose it means the dissolution of your... marriage."

He was very careful not to smile. Very, very careful.

"Not much of a marriage when it turns out you've married someone bearing a name of a stillborn child," John combed back his hair in a helpless gesture. "She duped me. Thoroughly."

"She was a good agent for the Crown," Mycroft remarked pompously. "As long as she stayed within the directions of her missions. When she stepped outside of these frames, _we_ had to step in."

"And so I'm not even divorced," John's voice was strangely calm and somewhat even - dare he say - happy? "I am, in essence, an old bachelor."

"So..."

"So I sold my house. Couldn't stand that place, the pitying looks of the servants, the neighbours asking daily... Sold my practice to a friend who needs to establish himself. I'm not accepting patients, well, apart from one - I'm back upstairs. Watching you. Making sure you don't die because my so-called wife got so jealous of my time spent with you that she decided to do you in by the careful manipulation of your dosages. Overseeing the waking nightmare the fading drugs produced. Also, the bronchitis you've managed to contract one day when I fell asleep and you had just enough strength to open the window and get us both thoroughly chilled. And the broken ribs, of course. And..." he shrugged. "Listening to you raving about visions of the future. Telling you where you are, when you are. Who you are."

"Ah?"

"Fever. You were... rather poorly, at some points."

"The _point_ is, brother, Doctor Watson is back to living with you, and you can go back to your old routines," Mycroft interjected. "With one exception."

He frowned, looking at their sombre faces.

"Your heart, Holmes," John sat down on the edge of the bed and busied himself with tying the laces of his shirt back again. "Your heart needs rest."

A warm hand touching lightly upon his solar plexus warmed him rather thoroughly.

"You will have to cut down on your usage. We will find other venues of... of relieving your boredom, but I beg you - no more cocaine."

His own hand crept slowly up, to cover John's where it sat just over his slowly beating heart.

"Can you do this, for me?"

_Can you do this for me?_

An echo. From another world. Another time. Another man.

Should he tell John what else cocaine is useful for? What other side effect of cocaine he was enjoying, while not enjoying other things? What would happen to his carefully suppressed attraction to... to who he should not be attracted to, once he was off the one 'medicine' that had worked for him?

John's thumb touched his skin where it slipped through the cut in the neckline of his shirt and under the fabric. A warm, direct contact, exercising small but significant pressure, the thumb making a calming circle on his _bare skin_.

Suddenly he felt as if something had quietly exploded in his brain as he tried to calculate the times and failed.

"Yes, we've kept you slightly 'medicated' through the first week, to avoid stressing your organism any further by sudden removal of the substance," Mycroft informed him nasally. "But you've been, so to say, _clean_ , for three weeks as of yesterday."

"B-but..."

His brother heaved himself to his feet and waddled towards the door. Sherlock half expected the chair to be stuck to his wide behind as he walked, but apparently Mycroft was reasonable enough to have occupied a little sofa.

"I will leave you two to it," he said pompously and shut the door to the bedroom behind him.

"I find myself again apologising," he said slowly. "I should have... I never looked into her in more detail. I could have spared you the suffering."

"Me?" John's eyebrows shot up to his hairline. "You were the one who suffered for her presence - and I was the one who brought her into this friendly circle, I wooed her, I... I married her!"

"And do you think it was by pure accident that she came into contact with you?"

The blue blaze of his friend's eyes was suddenly upon him.

"She _planted_ herself for me to... to try to..."

"I'm afraid so."

"And that was to..."

"Probably to drive a wedge between us."

"But she couldn't. She kept coming here, interrupting - that day when she came and pretended to be a client! - and she was... She was always here."

"So... what was her goal?"

"Your brother is working on that," John shrugged. "I'm just a shade tired of it all."

"I can't even imagine," he murmured. "I'm sorry, for whatever it's worth. I thought she made you happy."

"It seems every happiness I tried to find for myself passes without a trace - and if it leaves anything, it is a bitter aftertaste. It is quite possible that the only actual contentment I can have is right here, at your side."

"I've hurt you," he uttered. "I didn't protect you from her lies."

"It was not your job," John sighed. "I should have seen through her on my own. But that's done and closed now. What we need is for you to improve. Focus on this."

"Ah," he coughed, relaxing slowly into the pillows. "I will try. But, John, I need to tell you something..."

"You will need some way to occupy that brilliant mind of yours," his friend smiled affectionately. "Don't worry. I will find a way."

"It's not that," he closed his eyes and inhaled, trying to find the right words. "There is another effect of cocaine... a side-effect that worked for me very well for years, and I..."

"Sherlock," and the sound of his name from his friend's lips is like a caress. "Don't worry. _I will find a way._ To deal with that, too."

"B-but, John..."

"Sherlock, don't think me a simpleton," there was something in the blueness of these eyes that arrested his attention. "Ask yourself that - what exactly did you say when you woke up after having me breathe for you? How could you know that the burn I've left on your lips was from my moustache?"

"It could have been a reasonable conjecture based on observation of many females suffering..."

"It could. But it would not have made you say 'I hate bristly kisses'."

"Oh," was all that Sherlock could think of right then and there. And then he looked up. John's steady blue eyes were looking at him searchingly. "So, you would..."

The doctor shrugged sightly and slowly, infinitesimally slowly, slipped his whole hand into the opening in Sherlock's nightshirt.

"Now, tell me, what else did you dream about," he commanded, his fingers spreading on Sherlock's skin, sending a cascade of signals into his brain. "Last time it was... telephones? And airplanes? Anything new...?"

"Ah," he sucked in a deep breath. "Let me tell you maybe a few things about the society. I didn't focus much on the fashionable world around me, although a following for certain personages of stage and musical variety was still rampant. There were however... some significant differences in the everyday mores regarding... relationships."

"Go on then. Surprise me."

**Author's Note:**

> Modern CPR was not really invented until XX century, but there were techniques used since the 18th c that became the modern CPR.  
> [Cocaine and libido](http://wildishmazz.tumblr.com/post/170357138265/love-in-mind-palace-rsfcommonplace)
> 
> I am taking a writing course and one of the tasks is to ask my readers to describe my writing style in 3 adjectives. I'd be grateful if you could provide this kind of feedback :)  
> (if you provided it already somewhere else - THANK YOU! :))
> 
> [You can find me on tumblr.](https://srebrnafh.tumblr.com/)   
>  [Or visit my blog.](https://fanfik.wordpress.com/)


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